Opsimaths stay top
stretching their score difference advantage over the Bards to 9 points;

Top 4 (Opsimaths, Bards, Albert and Dunkin' Dönitz) all win
and stay in contention with just one week to go;

Cup draw has been made
(see Fixtures page)

The Results

The Bards
of Didsbury just managed a victory against The History Men at the
Cricket Club. Tony'sreport first....

"Steve has
proposed (and we have accepted) that having a blanket policy of always
going second can lead to recriminations on the few occasions when it
doesn't work out. This is especially true when it appears that the
question setters have twigged one's policy and have tried to penalise
the person sitting in the number four seat. So we decided to have
a second toss to see whether we would play first or second should we win
the initial toss. It was a bad mistake! We should have gone
second. If we'd done so we would have won by a street length
against our most affable opponents of the season. Ivor will
catalogue the imbalance of the questions and the startling results in
rounds 4 and 7 which led to a very narrow victory indeed.

Both teams
were under strength. Jim was on familial duties. Dom, who is
happier to act as scorer, nobly stood in for us as a number four.
The History Boys could only field three players by reason of seasonal
ailments. I was talked out of the Gary Gilmore answer but this was
more than made up for by Steve and Sarah working out the Jonathan
Greening answer. My blurt of the night was to say 'Rochester and
Chatham' but this was compensated for by Ivor forgetting to make a note
of the first letter of the first question and therefore getting the
'Doncaster Central' answer wrong. If he had not made this mistake the result would have
been very different. As I have said before I suppose this is what
quizzing is all about."

Ivor's
take on the match....

"We played in the main
lounge of the cricket club tonight and, until the arrival of two
chocolate labradors and their owner long after the end of the quiz,
there was not another soul in the club apart from the barmaid. How
different from our own normally raucous venue.

We
were a threesome tonight with Anne being felled by 'flu but we did give
the Bards a bit of a scare taking a 7 point lead after five rounds.
Then the tide turned and Round 7 became our undoing. As always
with a tight result at the end one looks back at the questions that
slipped away. In my case, having the last question in the top to
tail round, I could not remember the first letter of question one and
plumped for Doncaster East rather than Doncaster Central. Then, having
opted for the Royal Marsden as the centre of research for Tamoxifen,
Tony had a steal on the only other likely alternative, the Christie.
The Bards got the lion’s share (9-2) of the unanswered questions so
certainly did well to overcome the disadvantage of deciding to play first
once they'd
won the toss."

Compulsory
Meat Raffle lost to Dunkin' Dönitz in the Turnpike.
Kieran sends this report....

"It turned
out to be fairly easy for us and we ended up with a big boost to our
points difference, not that that will matter one jot come next week.

The
Turnpike entertained us by failing to fulfil its prime function and sell
beer. In retaliation Barry vaped away shamelessly without so much as a
peep from the 'miserable bastard'.

The
Raffle were good company as ever despite their cause looking lost from a
long way out. Andrew Pig QM'd expertly brooking no debate nor
indeed any time wasting. We had a gripe about the attribution
of Do-Be-Do-Be-Do to Kurt Vonnegut in 1982 since I clearly remember
seeing that graffito in the toilets of Liverpool University's Faculty of
Law, and I'm afraid I graduated long before 1982. David remembers it
from Oxford even earlier! But no damage was done by this slight error.

Raffler
Richard thumped the table in exasperation as we slotted home Andy
Townsend (nasty image) with the expletive laden '****ing hell I knew the
answer to a question about football before I was born and I didn't get
the chance to ****ing answer it!'

Onwards
to what seems an inevitable final scene next week. There can never
have been so many teams in with a chance of the title going in to the
last round of matches - and weird things can happen under that sort of pressure.
Over to you Mike!"

The
Opsimaths started well against their visitors, The Men They Couldn't Hang,
moving fairly rapidly into a double digit lead, but, try as they may,
they couldn't increase this margin winning at the close by 10 points.
With score difference likely to determine the destination of the league
title this year the margin of victory was a crucial concern.

On the
whole it was a good-natured evening supervised by Howell in the QM
chair. The only real moment of tension arose over the Round 8
question concerning Nicole's 'Corrections & Clarifications'. The
answer given in the question paper was fairly lengthy and both
teams offered something that identified the correct issue without
satisfying Howell that they'd got close enough for a certain point.
In the end we all agreed that Graham's initial answer had done enough to
get the benefit of the doubt. This type of situation often occurs
when the answer is longer than the question - as it was in this case.

Although busying himself
with the question paper Howell was still able to keep
tabs on the match stats. His records showed that we'd had 17
two-point answers, 18 one-point answers, 15 steals and 13 unanswered
questions. Of the 'unanswereds' 2 fell to the Opsimaths and 11 to
the Men. The Men definitely got the rough end of the deal by
winning the toss and going first.

So on to next week with
all to play for and TMTCH setting. Ethel are theoretically in with
a shout of the title but they need both the Opsimaths and the Bards to
lose, Dunkin' Dönitz and Albert (who play each other) to tie, and
themselves to win by a margin of around 70 points! For either
Albert or Dunkin' Dönitz to lift the league trophy they need to win
their match and see both the Opsimaths and the Bards
lose. If it ends up being between the Opsimaths and the Bards
- and both win - it will depend on the score difference each has notched
up over the
whole season. If that is level then the team that
has scored the most match points (almost certainly the Bards) will win.
So, were both the Bards and the Opsimaths to win next Wednesday then, in all
likelihood, it will come down to whether the Bards' margin of victory on
the night is 9 or more points greater than that of the Opsimaths.
Oooh-errr!

Albert beat The Charabancs of Fire at the Fletcher Moss to keep
their title hopes alive. First Mike's report....

"The score
makes it look tougher than it was because both teams were three-handed
(apparently Megson is busy trying to buy a consignment of relics,
'miracles guaranteed', from some Serbian gentlemen in Lourdes)."

and then
Damian's....

"I think
tonight's quiz must be up there with the most fun losses we have had
this season! With both teams a man (or, sorry Eveline, a woman)
short, it's yet another telling sign of our overall decline that Rosin
got all excited about the fact that we had only lost by a mere 10
points! Yep, that's what it takes to get us feeling good about a
quiz result these days. After an encouraging start in Round
1, as we swept into a 6-2 lead, our misplaced early confidence soon
evaporated as we lost every subsequent round by an increasingly large
margin. How tantalisingly cruel to us are quiz setters these
days! At one point, so desperate to get a point were we, that
Yours Truly excitedly blurted out the correct answer triumphantly
expecting a two only to realise that he had just answered John's
question without even bothering to consult him. To make matters
worse, John actually knew the right answer. Thereafter Eveline
made fun of me by reminding me of this faux pas at least 27 times!
At least, it felt that way."

Ethel
Rodin retained their glimmer of a hope of league glory by beating The Prodigals
at the White Swan/Ladybarn Social Club. First James....

"Nip and tuck all the way. Pretty good questions on
the whole - and very well balanced. Good themes, excellent
actually.

My
favourite Tory turned up tonight. Geoffrey Howe has, in typical
Geoffrey Howe style, slowly but surely made it into his very late 80s,
without seeming that old - but I suspect mainly because he's not in
the limelight any more - and I'd bet that a recent piccy might betray
his frailty. There must be an Aberavon dead Welsh sheep joke out
there somewhere, but I'd get it in quick.

We
had a good night with the Prodigals - probably the best banter of the
season tonight at the Swan. Their celebrity team member was even
mobbed by an autograph hunter (the barmaid).

I'm
slowly getting my own back on Dave Rainford for all those quiz nights in
the Old House at Home. Dave was a QM extraordinaire (microphone
generally superfluous) and can be blamed as an important influence on my
current enthusiasm for quizzing.

He
may not have noticed that we've somehow never lost to the Prodigals when
he's been playing; so I must have learnt something!"

....and
then Anne-Marie brief and to the point....

"Close match. The better team won."

The Paper

This week the paper was set by
The Electric Pigs.

There was an average aggregate of 68.0, a good deal less than the
81.0 of the Pigs' paper earlier in the season, but nonetheless quite
respectable. This paper
was full of variety and gave plenty of enjoyment judging by the feedback.
The main negative note sounded was that of 'question balance' (how often has
that been the main gripe this season?). Going second seems to have been of
considerable advantage according to the comments received.

At the Albert Club, in the Opsimaths/TMTCH match, all was fine until the 'Nicole
Corrections & Clarifications' question as mentioned above. We did wonder
why Round 4 wasn't declared a themed round when it turned out to have a link
running through the answers. We sort of half spotted that there was
something going on in this round but couldn't nail it and were discouraged by
the fact that nothing had been said up front. I goofed big time when I
blurted 'Beau Geste' as an answer rather than 'Brigadier Gerard' - especially
since I'd used this question myself in an Albert Club quiz just a couple of
months ago! The connection between my brain and my lips also turned
Nutrocker into Nutcracker but this slip was lost in the noise as
Howell invited both teams to perform the opening riff from the 1960s classic.
Finally I did get an uneasy feeling that there were, yet again, rather a lot of
pop music questions with a whole round themed on guitarists most of whom I'd
never heard of - but I'm getting an increasing sense that the rest of you are
happy to think of such knowledge as approximately 25% of everything known to
mankind (personal gripe over).

Comments from around the grounds....

Kieran:

"The themes were good and there was a brilliant bit of (possibly
unintentional misdirection) as we confidently answered David (Brian) May for the
non playing substitute in the 1999 Champions League final. Barry was at the Nou
Camp that night and May was indeed amongst the subs. If the Pigs set that trap
deliberately then 'chapeau'.

Question of the week? We liked the Nike 'Just Do It' back
story - anything that brings The Adverts to the forefront of
quizzers minds is ok by us."

Ivor:

"A
very varied set of questions tonight with some being (allegedly)
ridiculously easy and some nigh on impossible. We spotted the horse
theme fairly early and still think Hercules is a better name for a
workhorse computer than Pegasus. Rather more than usual sport
and post 1960s music questions tonight which is not to everyone’s
taste but did not seem to faze our David, or Steve (who got 6 twos
for the Bards)."

Damian:

"We felt tonight's paper was an interesting mixture of the good, the
bad and the ugly - but mainly good. We felt the 'pallets
question' was an example of the bad as neither team knew the answer
nor cared, while the final question about the footballer was so
overlong that we nearly fell asleep waiting for it to finish.
But, on the whole, a fair and interesting balance of topics and
themes.

QotW? The one about which sayings of a couple of philosophers
and a singer popularly adorn the walls of public toilets (apparently
lawyers have an unrivalled knowledge of this subject according to
our esteemed opponents)."

....and finally, and fittingly, Mike O'B:
"The themes were imaginative . Our favourite question was the
one about the politician who was born in Port Talbot. Good
evening in good company."

Question of the Week

Damian and the Charas opt for Round 4 Question 5:

Which graffito,
which purported to contain quotes from 2 philosophers and a singer (and has been
transferred to many a public convenience since), was coined by Kurt
Vonnegut in his 1982 novel Deadeye Dick?

With just one more week of league matches left and the Cup competition scheduled
to start on Wednesday April 15th it's time to get the cup fixtures sorted out.
So this week after the match at the Albert Club, Dave and his Hangmen made the
draw.
The resulting ties and other details are shown on the

The approach this year will be the same as last year. Handicap points
additions/subtractions based
on a team's performance in the league (as per the end of season table published
immediately after next week's round of league matches) will be
applied to teams' starting scores in each cup match.

Specifically....

ROUND
1: Six of our 11 teams will play in Round 1 with the
questions being set by the first team 'out of the hat'
that gets a bye straight into Round 2 (Compulsory
Meat Raffle earned this honour in this evening's
draw). The 3 Round
1 losing teams will go forward to the Plate semi finals
and the lowest scoring Round 1 loser will set the
questions for Round 2.

ROUND
2: The 3 Round 1 winners plus the remaining 5 teams
will play Round 2 matches with the highest scoring
losers becoming the fourth team to make up the Plate
semi final line up, and the lowest scoring losers
setting the questions for the semi final matches.

Questions
for the finals will be set by 'Knocked Out United' -
that is a round from each of the 7 teams not involved in
the final plus a round of paired questions with each
pair selected from submissions from the same 7 teams (I
will appoint an editor-in-chief for 'Knocked Out United'
nearer the time). As in previous years the
finalists will vote for what they believe to be the best
of the 7 'Knocked Out United' non-composite rounds.

Handicap
points (to be added to/subtracted from each team's scores)
will be shown on the website fixtures page before the
matches and should be included in the scores submitted
to me after each match. As well as determining the
match results, scores including handicap points will
be used to determine which teams are the Highest and
Lowest Scoring Losers, but will not be included
in the calculations leading to the average aggregate for
the week's paper.

Question
setters for all papers used in the Cup competitions must
provide a means of overcoming tied results so that there
is a clear winner for each match

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